Fangs and Fennel (The Venom Trilogy #2)(63)
“Here, this room.” She pushed a door on our right open and flicked on a light. The room lit up, revealing a glittering array of different materials and even some jewelry. I put the cupcakes down. “Put this on.” She tossed me something that looked like an oversized thong. The outfit, if that’s what it was, was all strings with the odd patch of material holding it together.
“Yaya, you’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to wear this.” I flung it back at her.
She caught it, turned it around, and held it up. “It’s a bathing suit, Alena. A stringy, flimsy one, but you need a bathing suit for a pool party. And you want Hephaestus blinded. That much is true.”
Reluctantly, I held up the supposed bathing suit. “Ernie, go see who is here.”
He saluted me and sped out of the room. I shut the door, stripped, and slid the bathing suit on. The patches of material covered, barely, my breasts and bottom. The strings of material attaching the three small pieces were hardly what I’d call coverage.
“Yaya, I feel like a streetwalker.” And there it was. I didn’t want to use whatever beauty I had to force people to do what I wanted. I didn’t want my siren abilities to come into play, not with someone I was beginning to think of as a friend.
I stripped the bathing suit off and put my own clothes back on. “I’m doing this my way, Yaya. No matter what happens.”
A soft smile touched her lips. “All right, my girl. All right.”
I paused, a thought hitting me hard. “Wait, Yaya, why did you ask if I was sure this was where Zeus lived when you’ve been here? And why didn’t you tell me?”
Her eyes closed and a shudder rippled through her. “I am his priestess, Alena. Even now. And he forbade me from telling you anything about his whereabouts.”
“Yaya, that’s awful that he can control you like that,” I whispered, wanting nothing more than to cut the ties between her and Zeus.
“It’s been my life for many years, Alena. I will be all right.” She winked at me, and a smile crossed her face. “Go on now, we don’t have a lot of time to get this done. It feels like the timer is about to go off on our oven.”
I knew what she meant. The feeling that I raced some unseen opponent pushed me. I scooped up the cupcakes and hurried back down the way we’d come, Yaya trailing me now. The sound of laughter and splashing drew me through the house. I tried not to freak out, tried not to think about how badly this could go. But what else did I have? Theseus was playing a game that I wasn’t sure I could match. He was slowly taking my friends and pitting them against me in a chess match where I couldn’t see all the pieces. He had Beth and Sandy. It was apparent he was working with Santos, so it stood to reason Theseus was behind the vampire attacks on me. Not to mention the fennel oil that he’d had made specially for me and that was no doubt in his stupid hands even now. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Beth had given the oil back to him.
I stepped through a pair of French doors and into the backyard. Though “backyard” might have been the wrong descriptor. The pool was Olympic size, if a rather irregular shape, and all around it were lounges with different species in them. I saw satyrs, nymphs, flitting fairies that dodged between hands swatting at them, more than a few deer that were talking, and a pair of werewolves in the nude and getting rather amorous, and then there were some that looked like your average people in bathing suits, though I doubted they were just humans. Another sweep of the area showed me that the majority of the attendants were nude, actually. Or at least topless. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Flowering trees, bushes, and exotic plants scented the warm air . . . warm? I drew a breath in, filling my lungs. The air was warm enough that I’d have said it was high summer and not the end of January. A fountain of Zeus stood over the pool, the water flowing from his . . . I blushed and looked at Yaya. “Who would want to play in a pool that was being filled from that?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Oh, Alena. You make me smile. Go on now. Hephaestus has seen you.” She gave me a gentle push, and I stumbled going from the stone patio to the lush grass.
A big pair of hands caught me before I could go to my knees. I looked up, and Smithy looked down. The ice in his eyes wasn’t as severe as I’d seen it. Though he didn’t look happy to see me there.
“Alena.”
“Smithy.” I pulled myself up and away from him. “I was hoping to talk to Zeus, but he seems to be missing.”
“Probably at the store.”
I shook my head. “No, he’s taken a leave. Pretty much as soon as he knew I was headed this way.”
His eyebrows shot up, and it was then I noticed he was wearing nothing but a pair of swim trunks. What drew my eye, though, was the large scar that ran down his right leg, from midthigh to midcalf. It was raised as though the scarring was relatively new.
“Thanks to Zeus.” His hand brushed the top of the scar. “And thanks to medical advances, it rarely bothers me now.”
I nodded and looked up and to the right, over his shoulder, but it was too late. The image of a smooth chest with the barest dusting of hair that trailed between a six-pack into the top of his shorts was burned in my mind. Though I didn’t feel anything for him, I wasn’t blind or immune to the sight of a well-chiseled body.
“What do you need Zeus for?” he asked, tipping his head so he was within my line of vision again. I kept my eyes on his, trying to ignore the fact that he was pretty much naked. Maybe I’d been wrong, maybe I should have worn the bathing suit.